How to prevent google from indexing trackback urls?

  • Hi, some of my trackback URLs are index in google. I use a permalink structure as shown below:

    hxxp://www.domainname.com/blog/year/month/day/postslug/

    The following URL is indexed in google :
    hxxp://www.domainname.com/blog/year/month/day/postslug/trackback/

    I dont want that to happen. I want ONLY the normal post to be indexed.

    I need to put :
    <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow” />
    tag to stop that from happening. But where exactly should i put it ?

    Do i need to modify wp-trackback.php (if so, which line exactly) ? Or is there any plugin for this ?

    I would like to AVOID touching the core files as far as possible.

    Any pointers would be of great use.

    thanks in advance.

    arjun

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

  • If you put that in your header.php in the head section, no search engine robot will look at your site – period. If you want to stay out of the search engines, then do that.

    I believe that trackbacks already have rel="nofollow" in their links. View the source of a post with trackbacks and search for nofollow to see if it is there. And make sure you have the latest version of WordPress.

    You shouldn’t have to do anything.

    For more on nofollow and how it works in WordPress, see Nofollow.

    “If you put that in your header.php in the head section, no search engine robot will look at your site – period. If you want to stay out of the search engines, then do that.”

    Good bots will obey those rules – such as Google-bot, MSN-bot, Inktomi and others.
    Other bots may not and probably will not.

    Thread Starter arjunprabhu

    (@arjunprabhu)

    Offcourse, i want my posts to be indexed. I just want to exclude the trackback links from being indexed.

    BTW, no follow only does NOT give weightage to links. It does not prevent a page from getting indexed. Correct me if i am wrong.

    Ideally, when i do this search :
    https://www.google.com/search?q=site:arjunprabhu.com+inurl:trackback it should not list any links. Thats what i am looking for.

    Have a look at single.php in your theme and see how the trackback link is being added, I thought by default the trackback links should have rel="nofollow" in them but yours don’t.

    Thread Starter arjunprabhu

    (@arjunprabhu)

    Done. Added red=”nofollow”

    from google help :

    When Google sees the attribute rel=”nofollow” on hyperlinks, those links won’t get any credit when we rank websites in our search results.

    Now, its not very clear. They dont say anything if the linked page is indexed or not. They only say that the ranking wont be effected.

    From :
    https://www.google.com/webmasters/bot.html#www

    Am i correct ?

    I’m not sure on that but short of not adding a link for the trackback then it is all you can really do unless you created the link with Javascript or something like that.

    I’m not shure if I understand, but if you wouldn’t like to have double content with your trackback uris
    so use:
    Permalink redirect

    permalinks could create double content, with this plugin google doesn’t index my trackback links.

    kindly regards
    Monika

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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